$240 Million in Customer Purchases Makes 1 January 2017 the App Store’s Busiest Day Ever
App Store from Apple has capped a record-breaking holiday season and a year of unprecedented developer earnings and breakout app hits. In 2016 alone, developers earned over $20 billion, up over 40% from 2015.
Since the App Store launched in 2008, developers have earned over $60 billion, creating amazing app experiences for App Store customers across other Apple products. These efforts made 2017 New Year’s Day the highest single day ever for the App Store with nearly $240 million in purchases.
“2016 was a record-shattering year for the App Store, generating $20 billion for developers, and 2017 is off to a great start with 1 January as the single biggest day ever on the App Store,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. “We want to thank our entire developer community for the many innovative apps they have created — which together with our products — help to truly enrich people’s lives.”
Customers broke all-time records this holiday season with purchases from the App Store topping $3 billion in December. In the same month, Nintendo’s Super Mario Run made history with more than 40 million downloads in just four days after its release, and was the most downloaded app globally on Christmas Day and New Year’s Day.
Super Mario Run is also among last year’s top 10 most downloaded apps worldwide, with Pokémon Go taking the top spot. Pokémon Go, a beloved game from Niantic, quickly became a cultural phenomenon in mid-2016. Prisma, Reigns, Procreate, Lumino City, Sweat With Kayla and djay Pro, from some of Apple’s independent developers, were among the most successful apps for iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, Apple Watch and Mac, respectively. The App Store offers 2.2 million apps in total, up over 20% from last year.
The App Store’s top-grossing markets include the US, China, Japan and the UK, with China experiencing record year-over-year growth at an incredible 90%. The global impact of the App Store was captured this past year with two campaigns — Apps for Earth and Games for (RED). In partnership with the World Wildlife Fund and (RED), customers were empowered to make a difference, helping to protect life on our planet and join the fight against AIDS. The custom content created by each campaign’s participating developers helped raise over $17 million in total for the two organizations.
Since subscriptions became available across all 25 app categories this fall, including Games and Kids, customers can subscribe to their favourite services from over 20,000 apps, with Netflix, HBO Now, Line, Tinder and MLB.com At Bat among last year’s most popular. iPhone and iPad customers grew the App Store’s subscription billings significantly in 2016, to $2.7 billion, up 74% from 2015.
